Dexlock or, The Introduction of Loxter
by L.Milo
Summary: Set AFTER Final Season of Dexter. SPOILERS. Uneasy Timeline - Dexter/Sherlock - Dexter had been able to find a suitable disposal site for all the body parts except the head. He had run out of time and options, so he had to improvise. ... with flatmate Sherlock Holmes' fridge.
1. Head Poser

"Because I don't want to be alone again."

_Uh-oh. Look at his eyes. Searching for something. Not enough human. Do something._

Dexter pulled his lips a little tighter, adjusting the corners just enough to implicate a smile. A hardenen, stoic smile that he'd seen Harry wearing many times.

A glint in Holme's eyes, recognition.

"... For various reasons onto which we will continue shortly, I'll... simply have to turn you down here, from the start, because beyond that fact that you're a murderer, I must tell you I'm quite singularly in love with my work-"

"No. No- not like-" He found himself swiftly advancing on the detective, apparently not something Holmes was accustomed to seeing performed with such effortlessness or he'd have reacted sooner. As it was he nearly tumbled back over the coffee table, but glided sideways to regain his balance in a susipciously graceful move, evading Dexter's attempt to catch his upper arm first. He straightened up slowly, eyes catching Sherlock's. Put the hand, still extended, down to his side. A beat between them passed.

He said, "Not like that. I don't want...- " He sighed, hands at his sides, looking at the floor with a fleeting mixture of rage and amusement. _I'm getting very good at these from being around John so much..._ Then it was too tiring. Blank. A small sighed laugh escaped him as he calmly lifted his eyes until he'd caught the other man's gaze again. His eyes were...

**_Deb appeared out of nowhere, jamming her__face up into Sherlock's unseeing face. _**

_**'Fucking CREEPY, Dex.**_**_This guy's a fucking murderer. I KNOW he is.'_****  
**

_Not now, Deb... _

He breathed.

Actually, he felt relieved to finally say it all, now. "As you can see, Sherlock, I'm rather married to mine, anyway..."

Sherlock stared back down at the more-or-less still neatly plasti-wrapped head, excluding strip that had covered his face which now lay like a translucent carpet inviting the viewer to see the excessively mutilated mouth on an otherwise unmolested and mundane severed head. His eyes darted over five various points of this tableau, then returned his gaze to Dexter.

"You think that I wouldn't have noticed the difference between this head and the other, Mr. Morgan? Really? Here I was, thinking we had come to understand each other so much better than that."

Dexter said, "Clearly." Blank, but slightly mocking.

Holmes' expression darkened, but still he inclined his head in concession to the point.

Before he could begin on his line of deductions that lead him to the right conclusion, Dexter took an interrupting breath in, nodding his head back towards the kitchen behind them.

"I put it in the freezer while you and Watson were out, last night, after I had put the fridge onto the coldest settings-" -Sherlock mercifully held his tongue about his American vernacular - "-then stuck it in the fridge about an hour before you had gotten back. Turned it back down, let the condensation fog the wrap again, and by that time most of the excess cold would have been gone. The temperature difference should have been... "

He craned his neck just slightly to the left to let the detective know he was studying what betraying information his body was giving to Dexter, even if Dexter's face wasn't up to the task of faking any more emotions than he already had at the moment.

_Fear, not much. He's interested, fascinated by this. Me. Pupil dilation. Thin white skin; superior visibility of his carotid artery. Accelerated heart rate._

" - it should have been negligible."

Sherlock replied immediately with a disgusted, "I know the temperature of my own _fridge_."

"That's not true." He knew he looked genuinely confused.

"_What?_"

"That can't be true. If that were true, why would you continuously set the temperature five degrees above what's necessary to keep milk from spoiling?"

"Oh shut up!" One of his white hands up to cover his mouth, covering the scowl that his brow still gave away. Then he whipped it away to stretch out a plaintive hand, accusing the imposter-head. "And where's MY head gone, if you don't mind?!"

"Speedy's."

Sherlock's hands steepled once again in front of his face, eyes shutting and head bowing forward just a bit. "You put my head head in Speedy's freezer?"

"Yes."

**Deb sighed, and Dexter felt her hand slap his shoulder as her voice disappeared somewhere far beyond the wall behind them.**

_'You reeeeally fucked it up this time, big brother...'_

The silence that then passed between them was telling. Dexter was almost inclined to say it was... pleasant. Neither of them made any moves, just Sherlock inhaling calmly in and out through his palms. All of it was out there, now. Everything. Sherlock Holmes knew Dexter Morgan was a serial killer. He was even probably piecing it together through his mind now, which one. Harry was gone. Deb was leaving him to face this one, alone, _again. _Even the Dark Passenger was speechless, frozen in its usual grip on his mind and unable to guide him through whatever came next. Everything was peaceful, and up in the air.

Then it all landed.

An undeniable, tight-lipped, deep little giggle was beginning to escape from behind Sherlock Holmes' hands.

- ... .- -. -.- / -.- - ..- / .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. - .-. / .-. . .- -.. .. -. -. / .. / -. . . -.. / .- / -... . - .- -..- / -.. . .- .-. / -. - -.. .-.-.- / .-. .-.. . .- ... . / ..-. . . .-.. / ..-. .-. . . / - - / .-. . ...- .. . .-


	2. Morning Routines

I own these characters not, obviously.

I just use puppets when I find them lying around.

-

This was never meant to last long. He had calculated, had everything gone as planned, it would be a week there as 221's basement neighbour, two weeks if everything went wrong. Everything _had_ gone wrong, and it had now been three weeks.

And now Oliver Saxon was dead. It was done.

_But where do I go now, Deb...? ... Harry...?_

_**He looked up and saw Deb. She was leaning on the door frame, 'freakishly' strong little twig arms crossed over her lanky twig body. She was shaking her head, looking at the floor... but it looked like she might want to smile. She looked up and she was biting her lip. **_

_**She gave a begrudging nod of her head accompanied with an exaggerated eye roll.**_

_**He smiled a little and waved.**_

There was a knock at the door.

Before he had the second to look up from the sink into the mirror there was another.

"Yes, hello." Another knock. "As some of us are rather busy and may or may not be covered in certain acids that are threatening the integrity of our clothes, could you please get out of there. Now, thank you!"

There was a muffled response from the other bedroom along the lines of telling Sherlock that _'he had only been in there a minute, you child!'._

Sherlock spoke clearly in his reply to this. "I have a precise schedule, John-"

A disgusted yell from the kitchen. _"Sherlock, what the hell IS all this?! Is this... Is this eating the FLOOR?"_

"I would REALLY advise not touching-"

Dexter drowned out the rest by groaning his rage into the next hands-full of water he splashed on his face, resurfacing with a splutter and, "Oh! I'll be, uh... I'll be out in a minute."

This. This was a nightmare. After 'the explosion', as Mrs. Hudson had him imformed him had 'made everything in the pipes go really a bit wonky, and dear, they never, mind you never returned any of my calls about it, not the city. They say I have to go through a private company-' He shook his head. He wished away the rest of that conversation. Mrs. Hudson was a kind... a very kind, innocent woman, if a bit talkative. Nosy. He'd hate to start harbouring murderous feelings towards her, just because of his own stupid inconveniences with having to share the bathroom with his neighbours upstairs.

_You know. The private detective? The first-net-then-world-famous, private detective, with his Dr. Watson friend, an ex-soldier at that, always following in close proximity? Always ready to expose something you'd rather have not. The one who's suspicious of you and whose only differentiating character from Doakes is that he's at least capable of putting on a good show for the humans around them and he's not calling you 'motherfucker'. That one, that- _

The door was being quickly unlocked from a key that he hadn't known had existed, because locked doors meant nothing to Sherlock.

Or nearly as little as they did to Dexter.

He saw a hazy glint of the straight-razor that Sherlock kept in the tooth-brush holder for some ungodly reason-

- the looked up, smiling with a refreshed 'Ah!' as he patted down the remaining moisture from his face just as the door thudded open. "Sorry-" He made some sort of sound that he refered to as a laugh, then pointed with a sheepish smile to where Sherlock stood blocking the door way before looking back up at him.

"Going to let me out?"

Sherlock stood there for a full and unnecessary three seconds longer before he backed up by swiveling on one heel, extending one hand as if he were showing the way out from a much grander experience than the detective's ill-abused bathroom could offer.

"My apologies, Mr. Ingolfson."

Dexter tucked his head forward in a nod-like gesture and mumbled his thanks as he squeezed past. He ignored the man's stare the man thought he couldn't see.

_I hate this name already._

The door slammed shut behind him as quickly as he'd passed out into the corridor, and as he turned for the kitchen to slip away he performed a stunt of heroism as he did not stab the butter knife through Dr. Watson's eye as he rounded on him in the kitchen, hell-bent in his mind-numbingly noble and genteel need to make this up to him.

He wished he'd never said anything about his... About Debra.

("_Scares me, I mean, though...I mean. Er, I'm not sure if I've ever told you about Harry? My sister." The doctor took another sip of beer._

_"She's.. She's, er, certainly going down that sort of road- I mean, not that, you know, I'm trying __**at all **__to compare - " Dexter shook his head to dispel his concern, and John continued with a short cough. "Right, well... Oh, and, and it er, hah... It scares me, yeah. I'm scared that... I won't be facing it as well as you are, if that day ever comes."_

_He took another sip of beer to save himself from his mouth, and so did Dexter. He had to lie about Deb's death. About Rita, Harry. But that was it. That all he could reveal, and only then with twisted names and facts. Still. The beer was nice. He liked the steak, even if it wasn't really the same. And John ate like Deb could. All teeth and knife and quick movements to and from his mouth. He felt like he could genuinely smile, but he didn't. He sipped more beer and said, "Really? Go on. Seriously.")_

"Darri, wait! Oh, my god, I really... Er, I mean, not that you don't know how he is by now, but you know, I apologise for Sherlock he's, er... He's... "

"He hasn't had his coffee. Don't worry about it."

John stopped, laughed and then smiled gratefully, almost like he was yet again amazed that an American was being reasonable and calm about pathetic domestic shit. Dexter smiled back in the same way. John was easy. Honest, innocent, honourable and easy. He took the folded newspaper he'd tucked under his arm and swatted John lightly on the shoulder as he passed him on his way for the kitchen.


End file.
